information aesthetics

Hospital Rates: Comparing Hospital Costs versus their Mortality Rate

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:37:57 +0100

Is your local (U.S.) hospital more expensive than others? And how does its mortality rate stack up against others?

Hospital Costs [kitware.com] developed by visualization and imaging company Kitware, contrasts statistics about hospital-specific charges of more than 3,000 U.S. hospitals with the mortality rate, for the conditions pneumonia and heart failure.

While the bar chart and scatter plot techniques are kept relatively simple, a rich set of interactive features are offered, such as the of filtering specific conditions or setting the variables of the 2 axes, to highlighting smaller subsets within the dataset.

So what is the least expensive hospital with the lowest mortality rate?

30 Years of "Oxford Summer Eight" Rowing Boat Bump Races

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:10:26 +0100

The interactive visualization Men's Eights 1980 - 2012 [feathersquare.com] by Feather and Square provides a complete overview of the "Oxford Summer Eight" bump race results.

Individual teams can be selected to explore their historical performance between 1980 and now

A bumps race is a form of rowing race which is particularly practiced at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford, at which boats try to catch up and "bump" the boat in front of them. Winning bumpers then move up in the next year statistics.

Words & Votes: The Changing Congressional Opinions on Gun Violence

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:34:30 +0100

The political visualization Words & Votes [sandyhookpromise.org], developed by digital agency R/GA for non-profit organization Sandy Hook Promise, provides a comprehensive look into the opinions of congressional representatives on the issue of gun violence.

More specifically, the visualization tracks each member of congress as being "neutral", on the side of "Gun Safety," or on the side of "Gun Rights". It then maps the evolution of these opinions over time on a vertical timeline.

These individual opinions have been based on two separate types of information: the analysis of the tweets sent by members of Congress and their voting record on Capitol Hill on laws and bills that relate to gun violence.

Individual members of congress can be explored in terms of being influential or vocal, or filtered by address, zip code or home town.

How Half a Second of High Frequency Stock Trading Looks Like

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:57:18 +0100

The movie shown below, developed by a real-time trading software developer Nanex, shows the stock trading activity in Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) as it occurred during a particular half a second on May 2, 2013.

Each colored box represents one unique exchange. The whote box at the bottom of the screens shows the National Best Bid/Offer, which often drastically changes in a fraction of a second. The moving shapes represent quote changes which are the result of a change to the top of the book at each exchange. The time at the bottom of the screen is Eastern Time HH:MM:SS:mmm, which is slowed down to be able to better observe what goes on at the millisecond level (1/1000th of a second).

In the movie, one can observe how High Frequency Traders (HFT) jam thousands of quotes at the millisecond level, and how every exchange must process every quote from the others for proper trade through price protection. This complex web of technology must run flawlessly every millisecond of the trading day, or arbitrage (HFT profit) opportunities will appear. However, it is easy for HFTs to cause delays in one or more of the connections between each exchange. Yet if any of the connections are not running perfectly, High Frequency Traders tend to profit from the price discrepancies that result.

More detailed information about this project can be found here. Via Huffington Post.

Mapping the Pavement Quality of Streets in L.A.

Thu, 09 May 2013 21:15:17 +0100

L.A. Street QualGrades [latimes.com], developed by the Los Angeles Times Data Desk, maps the pavement quality rating for each of the 68,000 street segments in L.A., the largest municipal system in the US with about 6,500 miles of paved roadway streets.

Using a state-of-the-art van equipped with cameras and lasers, the Bureau of Street Services graded each single street segment of L.A.'s vast street network from from A (dark green) to F (dark pink). The grades were based on a 100-point scale called the "pavement condition index".

The accompanying news article can be found here. Via Flowing Data.

YouTube Trends Map: Explore the Most Popular Videos by Location

Thu, 09 May 2013 20:10:51 +0100

The YouTube Trends Map [youtube.com] is a visualization of the most shared and viewed videos in various regions across the United States over the last 12 to 24 hours. It accompanies the more analytical Trends Dashboard to provide a full overview of the the rising videos and trends on YouTube in terms of actual views or shares, filtered by geographical location, gender or age of the viewers.

The demographic information of viewers is solely based on the information reported by registered, logged-in users in their YouTube account profiles. Next to the geographical map, the Trends Map also include a series of horizontal bar graphs, each representing a graphical summary of the top videos for a different demographic. Within each bar, a video is represented by a colorful segment, the colors are drawn from the video's thumbnail. The width of a video's segment reflects the number of regions on the map where the video is #1.

Bolides: Explore the Eye-Witnessed Meteorites that Collided with Earth

Fri, 03 May 2013 22:20:02 +0100

Bolides - Visualizing Meteorites [bolid.es] by data visualization designer Carlo Zapponi visualizes all historical occurrences of meteorites that collided with the Earth and were eye-witnessed when falling and hitting the ground.

The visualizes is comprised of a linear timeline of which the top denotes the number of meteorites spottings per year, and the bottom shows their mass, estimated in kilograms. The dataset includes 34,513 recordings of found and fell meteorites that have not been classified as doubtful or discredited. A meteorite is classified as 'fell' if it has been observed by people or automated devices during its fall.

Where is the King? Live Crowd Visualization of Amsterdam

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:55:30 +0100

Waar is de Koning? [waarisdekoning.nl], which can be translated as "Where is the King", was designed by Interactive Design Agency Clever Franke to map the movements and activities of the crowds as they gather in the city of Amsterdam today.

Based on actual anonymized usage data of the mobile phones antennas present in the city as well as the density of geo-located tweets, the map aims to inform the public during the ceremonies and festivities that are happening during the crowning of the Dutch King Willem-Alexander.

As is usual in the Netherlands, the map naturally features the color orange.

Here is Today: Comparing One Day to One Eon

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:36:34 +0100

Here is Today [hereistoday.com] by graphic designer Luke Twyman is a simple yet elegant timeline rendition that puts into context the different scales of time.

Ranging from one day to one eon, and framing the time periods different kinds of species emerged on Earth, the timeline ribbon acts like a dynamic stacked bar chart that enables easy comparison.

Connected China: Explaining the Players and Networks within China

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:01:52 +0100

The beautifully crafted app Connected China [reuters.com], designed by Fathom Information Design, tracks and visualizes the people, institutions and relationships that form China's elite power structure.

The application was specifically designed for the iPad and is based on data, text, photos and videos from the international news agency Reuters.

Three visualizations stand out: "Social Power", which represents the power base of Xi Jinping through family connections; "Institutional Power", which reflects the power of the Politburo Standing Committee on every level of the government; and finally, "Career Comparison", which tracks the career paths of the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee.

More information about the this app is available here.

Chesapeake Bay Grasses: Tracking Underwater Vegetation over Time

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:31:47 +0100

Chesapeake Bay Grasses [chesapeakebay.net], designed by Stamen Design is an interactive map that tracks a quite exotic subject: the changes of the underwater grasses at Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States.

Accordingly, the map reveals how the fluctuations in water temperature, salinity and turbidity correlate to grass abundance, as dominant species ebb and flow and grass beds shrink and expand over a period of 30 years.

More information about this project is also available here.

TweetMap ALPHA: Querying a Massive Amount of Tweets on a Map

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:58:03 +0100

The impressive TweetMap ALPHA [harvard.edu], developed by Harvard University's Center for Geographic Analysis, is based on a dataset of about 95 million tweets, which can be dynamically queried by time, by location or by keyword.

Tweetmap makes use of so-called special Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) to parallelize the hard-to-compute job such as the querying and rendering of the very large dataset on-the-fly. As such, the online map shows individual tweets as unique dots, but also aggregates them as a heatmap. In addition, the a series of maps can be generated and explored by time, ranging from days to mere seconds.

The Largest Web Page on the Internet: 7 Billion People on One Page

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:33:24 +0100

7 Billion World [7billionworld.com] displays 7 billion people together on a single webpage.

Developed by Worldometers - which themselves were originally posted in the good year of 2005 -, the web page itself is generated through some small programming code, yet is claimed to be 1 mile (1.6km) high and 800 feet (250m) wide, which is both horizontally and vertically scrollable.

Reminds me of World Population One.

Prime Explorer: Exploring Patterns in Prime Number Spatial Layouts

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:14:47 +0100

Prime Explorer [bigblueboo.com], developed by a San Francisco-based software company called Mode of Expression, provides an interactive view of all the prime numbers ranging from 1 to 62,500.

Each prime number is represented by a bright, white square, whereas a non-prime ("composite") is grey. Visitors can select difference spatial arrangements of these numbers, ranging from several variants of the well-known Ulam Spiral, over the Archimedian spiral, to the more sophisticated 3D Hilbert curves.

Some spirals contain strikingly bright diagonals or arms. One can attempt to select 3 prime numbers within these apparent constellations to highlight a curve ("quadratic polynomial") that fits this numerical combination, and explore how the the according visual pattern changes over the different spatial layouts.

Gender Balance in Conferences on Data Visualization

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:15:24 +0100

Gender Balance [stefaner.eu] by Moritz Stefaner provides an eye-opening look on how well females are represented as speakers for conferences on data visualization, creative code and information graphics.

Based on Andy Kirk's data visualization census surveying more than 1500 people, the proportion of women in this field has been estimated to be around 23%. Ideally, then, thematic conferences should be able to reach this threshold, or should they rather follow the biological ~50-50 distribution?

Each square symbol represents a unique conference, which is horizontally divided by men (brown) and women (green). The vertical width represents the total number of speakers, whereas the horizontal position stands for the proportion of women speakers in the line-up of the event. The graph can be further sorted by time or conference series.